Today, I thought I would just do a quick dump of the news stories I found interesting and added via Instapaper.
Coffee and lower prostate cancer
US West pollution was mostly caused by wildfires. Shocking. I know.
Exawatt class lasers – I picked this story because it has the word laser in it. Duh.
This is a small fraction of what I read but they are good stories, nevertheless.
I used to hate the idea of pink anything. I didn’t even want to be near it.
As I am getting older, I am finding that not to be as true as it once was.
I saw that they had a pink robe on Amazon for a guy and I almost considered it.
Times, they are a changing.
From the Franklin-Covey system…
Seek to understand before seeking to be understood.
In light of recent events, this is even more important.
To extend the quote…
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
That was a quote from Dr. Franklin Covey.
I try to live this every day. I do not go around telling people how to live their lives or what they should or shouldn’t be doing.
I think that is a good way to live. I’m not a stand up guy. I never have been. I’m not a great leader nor do I wish to be. Those are external definitions and really don’t mean a lot to me personally. I like to focus on me.
If at the end of my life someone can point to me and say “He wasn’t a bad guy” I think that would be a nice thing. Will I care after I am dead?
Of course not. You know. Because, I’ll be dead.
Planning.
We all plan. All of the time.
We may not know that we are doing it but we do. When you get up in the morning, you may have thought to yourself that you’ll visit an old friend.
You don’t necessarily tell anyone but you just stop by his house for a visit.
I don’t like that.
I don’t like it because you knew that you were going to do something and I think you have a basic obligation to let that person know that you are planning on stopping by.
I guess this is kind of a rant.
I’m not sure.
Excessive human population.
That fact drives everything else that has anything to do with global warming.
More people means…
Someone said that it isn’t the amount of plastic bottles that is the real issue. The real issue is the need for all of those plastic bottles. Remove the need and they won’t be making all of those plastic bottles anymore. The same works for cars, etc.
Our population is way too big for the planet and it is only going to get worse. Scientists seem to take the position that this can somehow be controlled without getting rid of the human issue. In most cases, population is never mentioned.
How can you not talk about it?
You can’t. If you don’t remove a vast amount of the human population, you can never recover.
If you want to reduce CO2 and you honestly believe that is the major issue than you must entertain the idea that you need to remove people to do it.
This is a new term that I coined to explain what setting up a new computing environment is like. It is full of “environmental misbehavior.”
Nothing works right the first time in my world. There are way too many complexities. We can’t always think of everything and even though we rely on checklists more and more to make sure we don’t miss anything; we still do.
This post is really no more sophisticated than that.
I refuse to write about politics anymore on this blog.
So, I won’t.
I’m not sure about what went on yesterday but I’ll say this much…
…Jesus.
I saw an article this morning about a new telescope that is supposed to aid in our understanding of the “Big Bang” theory. You can read it here.
As an official scientific community armchair quarterback, I can honestly wonder to myself out loud “who gives a rat’s ass?” Our focus shouldn’t be on something that you are never going to solve in your lifetime. As a scientist, I think your focus should be on the here and now.
You are never going to understand the origins of something that you are completely removed from. The example I would use is someone who decides that he wants to clear a bunch of land on his farm. Cows are displaced. Will they ever know why? No. No they will not.
Why? You ask. Let’s assume for a moment that the cow has a mind of its own and can think rationally. Some dude in the next state over who happens to own the farm decided one day that he wanted to clear that particular patch of land. Is the reasoning cow ever going to know why he was displaced? Probably not.
The cow isn’t even near the source of information that might tell him why he was moved.
In the case of the “Big Bang” theory, we aren’t anywhere near anything that could help us figure out that level of detail. We would need to collect samples from other regions of the universe and so forth. We can’t do that.
I’m not going to write about the entire theory of relativity but I do want to touch on a concept that I believe Einstein got wrong. The concept is reality versus perception.
If I jump into a rocket ship and I speed away from the Earth at light speed until I reach the edge of the solar system and then I turn around and come back my watch might read that exactly 5 days have passed for me.
According to Einstein, someone on Earth would be older when you return to Earth than you are. Bullshit. Time moves at the same speed for me as it has for the person stuck on Earth. You cannot change that. Einstein would have you believe that it is true but that isn’t what we’re looking at. What Einstein observed was perception. There is a perception that time moves differently than it really does.
If you want to see an excellent example of this, watch any of the Apple screensavers that hover above a city or a landscape where you see something moving below. It is moving so very slowly, isn’t it? Well, not really. The cars are doing anywhere from 30 mph to 60 mph. They just LOOK like they are moving slower but the reality is something different. This is an excellent example of my concept.
This is why I don’t agree with Einstein’s theory. I have always had a hard time figuring out how so many people can believe the same nonsense. The theory itself should make any sane person shake their head.
I’ll add one more thought to this quick article. Have you ever heard the argument about synchronizing watches? You synchronize two watches and send one of them up to the ISS. When you bring them back together, you’ll see that the Earth watch is behind the ISS watch in time.
Does that prove Einstein’s theory?
No. What it proves is something we already know which is that electricity moves differently in microgravity than it does at 1G. This would be the same for a physical mechanical watch. The gearing would move much differently in space than on Earth. Time isn’t changing but our perceptions are.
That is why I don’t agree with his theory. You may not agree and that is ok.
We won’t really have great answers to this for millennia anyway when we can finally get out into space and explore instead of armchair quarterbacking the universe.
Series: Tyrus Rechs: Contracts & Terminations
Authors: Jason Anspach and Nick Cole
